Kate Middleton-look-a-like, Kate Bevan from Stafford, modelled the dress which is loosely styled on a 1920s theme before changing into a number of ‘going away’ honeymoon outfits as selected by Manchester Arndale’s style advisor, Debs Hatfield. The eco wedding bouquet is from Ellamia flower store at Manchester Arndale market.

The shopping centre commissioned local eco designer, Michelle Brand, to create the stunning wedding dress - which has taken Michelle three months to make the 8ft train and her loyal volunteers 12 days to construct the bottle layer, using 1,110 bottle bases, 6,512 bottle tops and 9,440 tags to fix it all together - to mark the Royal Wedding in an unusual way. The dress, which weighs around 10kgs, forms the centre-piece of Manchester Arndale’s ‘Think Green’ event* on 15th and 16th April which is all about getting people to understand more clearly their impact on the environment and how everyone can each ‘do their bit’ to help.

Around 240 retailers have pledged to ‘do their bit’ by encouraging customers to use only paper, biodegradable plastic or canvas ‘bags for life’ during the two-day event in support of being environmentally aware. Manchester Arndale is also promoting its own ‘bag for life’ which shoppers can receive for free if they agree to sign a green pledge and promise to ‘do their bit’ by trying to live a greener lifestyle.

Michelle Brand explains the concept behind the dress: “‘Green with Envy’ is a celebration, it’s a proposal of opportunity to see mass produced everyday objects differently. It explores how we can make sense of the green issue of sustainability - what does it mean to people on the street? There’s a lot of talk but here we seek to put in place something sustainable by showing the unseen beauty of everyday mass produced objects, giving them an up-cycled second use.

“One of the aims of my work is to dispel the misconception that designed art objects made from ‘found’ or ‘re-used parts’ lack a certain je ne sais quoi.”

The story of the dress starts at the shopping centre with a customer taking a sip of a drink out of a plastic bottle and then putting the empty bottle into a plastic recycling bin within the foodcourt mall. From here the plastic bottle gets emptied out by the mall cleaner and is taken away for recycling. The large bags full of plastic bottles are taken off-site to EMERGE recycling plant in East Manchester and Michelle – who EMERGE’s designer in residence – starts to get to work on cutting the bottom flower-shaped bases of the bottles. This industrial process is then followed by filing down the sharp ends, washing and polishing the flower shapes. These are then ready to be tagged onto the dress design, along with the thousands of white bottle tops some of which have been kindly donated by an educational resource group called grumpy.org who are based in Manchester and Salford.

Michelle has been busily creating the wedding dress at Stockport Art Gallery, where she is also eco designer in residence, and has had help along the way from a number of their volunteers. Michelle was also consulted with Manchester Metropolitan University textile artist Janet Bezzant and local dressmaker Di Faukner on the dress design.

Michelle continues: “This has been a very time-intensive project, and not without its challenges especially as I normally create up-cycled chandeliers not wedding dresses! The work and support of the volunteers has really helped me to design and create a fabulous piece which I hope will make people stop and want to learn more about the process of how it was made. If it does this, then it has done what it set out to achieve which is to bring the idea of sustainability to the everyday consumer in a creative and thought provoking way.”